Characters / The Ring (2002)

The Keller-Embry Family

Rachel

Rachel Keller

Played By: Naomi Watts

• Big "NO!": After she discovers Aiden watching the tape.
• Cool Aunt: According to her sister, Katie was close with Rachel and confided things in her that she wouldn't have with her mother.
• Expy: Of Reiko Asakawa.
• False Reassurance: She tells Aidan that they did nothing wrong when they sent Samara's tape out into the public.
• Good Parent: To Aidan, yes. To Samara, no.
• Heroic BSoD: When she finds Noah's corpse.
• Heroic Sacrifice: In the second film, Rachel allows Samara to drag her into the tape's monochromatic world to protect Aidan. She escapes though after sealing Samara in the well.
• Intrepid Reporter: After Ruth asks her to look into Katie's death, she dives in head first in trying to find out what happened to her niece, and later what happened to Samara, in an attempt to break the curse.

• Necessarily Evil: In The Ring Two, when Samara has fully taken over Aidan's body, the only way to subdue her and drive her out of her son is by nearly killing him. Which Rachel accomplishes by taking a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and lacing it with enough pills to horrify the audience.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: By destroying Samara's tape, Rachel frees Samara to do more damage in the world.
• One-Hour Work Week: Her office hours are pretty irregular; it isn't too jarring considering she's a journalist, and her domineering personality.
• Parental Abandonment: It's strongly hinted that Rachel's focus on her career takes her away from Aidan, resulting in her being in the dark about his anxieties (if not outright dismissive) and going to parent-teacher meetings only out of obligation. This changes by the second film, specifically seeking out a smaller newspaper so she can spend more time with her son.
• Poor Communication Kills: Granted, the Curse is hardly believable as it is, but she only has herself to blame when the lack of reasonable explanation for her actions in the second film gets Child Protection Services on her head.
• Precision F-Strike: In the second film, when she kicks Samara down the well.
  "I'm not your fucking mommy!"
• Psychic Nosebleed: One of the symptoms of being contaminated by the tape.
• Shower of Angst: She takes one in the first film.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Aidan calls her out when she reveals she freed Samara's body from the well.
• Working with the Ex: She works with her ex-boyfriend Noah to uncover the mystery of the tape, due to his technical expertise.

Aiden

Aidan Keller

Played By: David Dorfman

• Creepy Child: On par with Samara, and it becomes worse when she possesses him.
• Demonic Possession: At the hands of Samara, who appears behind him in The Ring Two in a public bathroom and approaches him with each photo he takes of himself in a mirror.
• Expy: Of Yoichi Asakawa.
• Nightmare Fuel Coloring Book: He drew many unsettling sketches of his cousin Katie buried deep underground (or even underwater) in the run up to her death. After watching the tape, his artistic focus changes to Samara's house, the inside of the well, and progressively obsessive drawings of circles.
• Promotion to Parent: Rachel's parenting and Noah's absence have forced him to take this role.

• Poor Communication Kills: He never volunteers any information on his visions, it has to be Rachel who asks him about them after his behavior or drawings tip her off. It's only after Rachel frees Samara from the well that he tells her she will continue to kill people.
• What the Hell, Hero?: He's the one to break this to Rachel.

Katie

Katie Embry

Played By: Amber Tamblyn

• Big Sister Instinct: To help prepare him for losing her, she told Aiden her seven days were almost up.
  Rachel: Katie said she was going die?
  Aiden: She told me, she didn't have enough time.
• Cool Big Sis: From the all photo's of the two of them we see that Katie and Aidan were incredibly close, and that Aidan thought the world of her, making her death and his depression because of it all the more tragic.
• Nightmare Fuel Coloring Book: Katie draws sketches of images in her head in her work book, eventually writing "Why is this in my head!?"
  • She also scribbled "hair" over the faces in a fashion magazine, making all the models look like Samara.
• Peek-a-Boo Corpse: Perhaps one of the scariest images of the film is when Kaite's mum Ruth opens a closet and finds Katie's body with a deformed face. The fright is not from the corpse but from the sudden appearance of the imagery. Katie's facial fate is hinted at in the final frames of the opening scene when the camera zooms at her face - it distorts.
• Victim of the Week: Katie fills this along with three others, or four if you count Becca as witnessing her death.

Ruth

Ruth Embry

Played By: Lindsay Frost

• Cool Aunt: In spite of her grieving Katie, she still agrees to watch over Aiden while Rachel goes off to discover what happened to Samara, on her last day.
• Inciting Incident: She asks Rachel to investigate what happened to Katie, which is what sets off Rachel and Aiden getting involved with the Morgan family trauma.
• Outliving One's Offspring: Her being in mourning over Katie is what gives Rachel the drive to find out what to her niece, to help Ruth through her grief.

Moesko Island

Samara

Samara Morgan

Played By: Daveigh Chase

• Abusive Parents: Richard Morgan banished her to the ranch barn. Her biological and adoptive mother tried to drown her.
• Affably Evil: This is debatable, even though she is an eight-year old girl.
• Artifact of Doom: Her version of the cursed videotape which is as twice as long as Sadako's and twice as terrifying.
• Break the Cutie: It doesn't appear to take long. She makes verbal threats about her future rage against the world.
• Composite Character: Obviously based on Sadako, but also on her evil twin from Ring 0.
• Creepy Child: One of the Trope Codifier, what with the long stringy hair, the quiet voice and the dirty dress. Oh yeah, and that she was able to make a killer video tape after being killed by her mother.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Samara was nearly drowned by her birth mother Evelyn, and then received even more misery at the Morgan Ranch thanks to her uncontrolled powers. She was locked in the barn by her father, and took her frustration out on her mother's beloved horses by driving them to suicide. She was eventually tossed down a well by Anna.
• Death Glare: A literal example. Whenever her face is revealed through her long stringy hair, only one of her eyes is seen which is enough to kill anyone who looks back at her.
• Demonic Possession: Possesses Aidan and fails to act like him when in Rachel's company.
• Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: When she was still alive, she had milky skin, long dark hair and was a Creepy Child.
• Evil All Along: Despite her innocent facade, she simply is an evil little girl, who wants to ensure that the world suffers.
• Half-Human Hybrid: Half human, half something else, according to her birth mother.
• Humanoid Abomination: See Half-Human Hybrid. Aside from that she's got Psychic Powers that are borderline Reality Warper in scale. The power she possesses is so intense that she can Mind Rape people just by being in proximity to her.
• Ironic Echo: Rachel watches an interview from the mental institution:
  Psychiatrist: You don't want to hurt anyone.
  Samara: But I do [hurt people], and I'm sorry it won't stop.
  Later, Rachel remembers the video with a slight change in tone:
  Psychiatrist: You don't want to hurt anyone.
  Samara: But I do [want to]... And it won't stop.
• Ironic Nursery Tune: "Here we go, the world is spinning, when it stops, it's just beginning. Sun goes up, we live and we cry, Sun goes down, and then we all die."
• Madness Mantra: "Mommy!"
• Making a Splash: Samara is so terrified of water, she can subconsciously use her powers to repel it high into the air — only for it to come splashing down when her focus is removed.
• Nightmare Fuel Coloring Book: Unwittingly made on X-ray plaques with her Psychic Powers. Like any other child, she likes images of horsies and trees, but the images themselves are horrifying.
• Our Ghosts Are Different
• Power Incontinence: Even before birth, she possessed Psychic Powers that exceeded her ability to control. Anyone who came close to her, man or beast, suffered horrendous hallucinations just from her being there.
• Psychic Nosebleed: Her influence on those marked with her curse can manifest these. Rachel, while finding she can pull things from Samara's tape into physical reality begins to bleed from her nostrils, and Aiden while explaining to Rachel that Samara is evil and setting her free from the well was a mistake, begins bleeding profusely from his nose.
• Psychic Powers: Samara has uncontrollably nensha powers, which allow her to burn images onto surfaces and into people's minds.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: Trapped in a well by Anna Morgan. Suffered the same fate as a ghost in The Ring Two.
• Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl: The one and only Trope Codifier, Samara established this trope as an iconic kind of ghost.
• Tragic Villain: Heavily hinted that the relationship between Samara and her foster parents was anything but a loving one. She repaid the favor by making their lives a living hell.
• Yandere: A non-romantic example in The Ring Two. Samara considers Rachel to be a surrogate mother because she was nice to her in the first movie, and nothing is going to stop them from being a happy family.
• Yank the Dog's Chain: Samara possesses Aidan and finally has her wish granted, to be loved by a mother, in this case Rachel. That is until Rachel drugs her and then exorcises her from her son in a bath, before sealing her again in the well.

Anna

Anna Morgan

Played By: Shannon Cochran

• Cool Horses: The Morgans' famous racing horses made them famous. Then they killed themselves, making them even more famous.
• Down on the Farm: Make that horse ranch.
• Driven to Suicide: Pretty much everyone in the family save Samara. Anna leapt off a cliff, Richard electrocuted himself in a bathtub, and the family horses leapt off cliffs thanks to Samara.
• Expy: Anna is the equivalent of Shizuko Yamamura.
• Mirror Scare: A scene on the tape depicts Anna brushing her hair and the mirror is moved about telekinetically by Samara, lifted straight out of the Japanese films.
• Red Herring: In-universe example: Rachel believes Anna may have made the cursed video, when it was actually created by Samara.

Richard

Richard Morgan

Played By: Brian Cox

• Abusive Parents: Richard in particular, forcing Samara to live in the barn and prefers the horses to her.
• Bath Suicide: Richard kills himself via electrocution in a bath. It's not a pretty sight.
• Cool Horses: The Morgans' famous racing horses made them famous. Then they killed themselves, making them even more famous.
• Down on the Farm: Make that horse ranch.
• Driven to Suicide: Pretty much everyone in the family save Samara. Anna leapt off a cliff, Richard electrocuted himself in a bathtub, and the family horses leapt off cliffs thanks to Samara.
• Electrified Bathtub
• False Reassurance: Richard tries to pull this on Rachel when she asks about the existence of Samara and the tape.
• Foreshadowing: As soon as Rachel reveals she's made a copy of the tape, Richard realizes that killing her right then and there with a hook won't keep the curse from spreading.
• Ironic Echo: When Richard refers to all reporters (and Rachel in particular) as unable to leave well enough alone, "spreading the sickness" via their investigations. Which is exactly what Rachel did with Samara's curse.
• Living Relic: Richard after losing his family and quitting his business.
• Red Herring: That Richard killed Samara, when in fact Anna did.
• Villainous Breakdown "MY WIFE WAS NOT SUPPOSED TO HAVE A CHILD!"

Dr. Grasnik

Dr. Grasnik

Played By: Jane Alexander

Other Characters

Evelyn

Evelyn

Played By: Sissy Spacek & Mary Elizabeth Winstead

• Madness Mantra: The melody she hums to herself, which is the American series' theme tune.

• Passing the Torch: Evelyn asks Rachel to out away her child since she failed to in the past.
• Patron Saint: According to an orderly at the asylum, Evelyn is visited by young mothers for guidance.

Noah

Noah Clay

Played By: Martin Henderson

• Indy Ploy: He's very resourceful at getting what he wants.
• Lighter and Softer: He couldn't be more different from Ryuji if he tried. Unfortunately, this also extends to his investigative skills.
• Papa Wolf: While the two barely have a relationship he goes into double overdrive in helping Rachel, after learning Aiden watched the tape.
• Parents as People: He openly acknowledges to his son he wasn't father material when Aiden was born, but he does care about him, and will move heaven and hell to keep him safe. After helping Rachel investigate Samara, he seems ready to finally connect to Aiden, who is willingly reciprocal. Unfortunately his 7 days run out...
• Sacrificial Lion: He's killed so that Rachel knows the curse isn't over.

• Working with the Ex: Noah works with Rachel. They seem to rekindle their old flame in the process.

Max

Max Rourke

Played By: Simon Baker

• Expy: Appears to be the American equivalent of Okazaki.
• Innocent Bystander: He is killed by Samara when he tries to record her on camera.

Becca

Rebecca "Becca" Kotler

Played By: Rachel Bella

• Bedlam House: Poor Becca ends up in one after seeing Samara kill Katie, and has a fear of televisions.
• Power Born of Madness: Becca appears to gain some form of Psychic Powers, predicting the number of days Rachel has to live.

Ring Groups

The Ring Groups

After Rachel released the tape into the public, copies were made among teenager groups, creating a teenage cult called "Rings" as seen in the short film of the same name. These Secret Circles of Secrets involve about five people, each person watching the tape to see how long they can last with the supernatural symptoms of the curse, whilst recording what they see. If they panic or give up, they can pass the tape to the next member, and so on. Very few rings have seen anyone get beyond Day 7, and the Astorian Ring seem very determined to do that, particularly with their newest member Jake.

• Asshole Victim: Subverted for Jake, who desperately tries to trick his friend Emily to watch the tape only for her to close her eyes when watching it.

• Hidden Agenda Villain: Vanessa really wants to see the outcome of Day 7, regardless of who gets sacrificied.
• Love Hurts: Jake's crush on Vanessa leads to his involvement with the tape and to his fate at the beginning of The Ring Two.